


Love Salient

by arienai



Series: VKaz Week 2016 [4]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: M/M, On Killing, Technically MKaz, Unrequited Love, VKaz Week 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 15:38:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8062027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arienai/pseuds/arienai
Summary: Kaz doesn't take his doctor's advice.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **salient**  
>  noun  
> Definition: (military) a projection of the forward line into enemy-held territory
> 
> Prompt: Handle with care

It was ironic, he thought, that Big Boss was the one who noticed him. Solid work, he'd grunt, when he made a good shot from the supporting line. I'll leave this to you, he'd nod appreciatively, when he left a wounded comrade with him so that he could press the advantage in a fight. Anything you need? he'd ask, always making sure he was well supplied and had the field position he wanted.

Big Boss's respect was a reliable source of pride, to be sure, but he was also sure that Commander Miller wouldn't notice if he fell off the side of Mother Base tomorrow. He was almost as confident that the man didn't even know his name.

"Hm," Miller'd paused thoughtfully, as he pored over a budget he'd submitted for the infirmary for the next month. "I'll have to cut a few things from transport and supply, but if it's for you, I'm sure the Boss'll be okay with it."

He'd admired the other man's easy, charming smile a second too long before responding, "Thank you, sir."

"No problem! Uh..." Miller'd paused too, scanning the bottom of the page for his signature. Of which one letter was legible. "...V?"

"I... actually, sir, it's..." He'd put forth his best effort to respond in a way that wouldn't be awkward or embarrass either of them, but couldn't manage to get it out before the door opened.

"Miller!" Paz announced with a small pout. "You said that you would come practice with me today."

Miller'd waved apologetically as he was dragged away, leaving him to sigh softly.

At least he'd gotten to hear him play.

Never close enough for Miller to notice, of course, but that was his own little piece of heaven: listening to gentle chords carried by the sea breeze, accompanied by the voice of a sweet girl and the wandering birds overhead. He smiled into the warm, setting sun, until his Boss clapped him on the shoulder a little too knowingly and told him to get back to work.

He looked back just in time to see the last few rays of light gleam off pale hair, setting it ablaze with colour, before he trudged down to the lower decks.

It was fitting, really. Miller was the sun, to him: too high, too far out of reach, and if he touched him, he'd get burned. Big Boss, though, he was the kind of man who could wrest the sun out of the sky, if he wanted to. And dash it to pieces against the earth.

He did his best to keep his distance from Miller most of the time. Once, after he'd heard that Miller liked music, he'd considered asking him to take some shore leave with him to listen to a few of his favourite musicians play. Nothing too fancy: just jazz, at a small, intimate club. He knew Big Boss didn't care for it at all; that was to be his paper thin excuse to be breathtakingly inappropriate with his own superior, and he'd quickly talked himself out of it while standing outside Miller's room. Tickets clutched in one hand.

After all, for all his much celebrated interest in women, Miller and the Boss were no secret.

So he avoided Miller if at all possible. Which it was not, at the moment. He was signing off on the last medical reports of his shift when the knock on the door came. 

"It's locked for a reason," he said tersely. "Unless somebody's dying, sick parade starts at 0730 tomorrow." 

"Somebody slept on the wrong side of the bed, huh?" Miller's laugh froze him to the spot. "I thought doctors were supposed to be caring. You're not going to let me bleed all over your doorstep, are you?"

Heat surged unpleasantly up his neck. He fought it down and walked briskly to the door. "You're bleeding? How badly?"

Badly, as it turned out. From his temple, just past his hairline, and his chest, right under his clavicle. Miller clutched the former while it spilled over his fingers, and the latter soaked into his uniform. His irritation vanished in a heartbeat, along with his trepidation. He frowned instead, teeth on his lip. "...What happened?"

Miller shook his head with a wry grin, inviting himself inside. "I asked Snake to show me a few CQC moves. Turns out the boxes he threw me into were a little more breakable than either of us were expecting. A little more full of sharp objects, too."

"Where is he?" He asked, staring behind Miller in puzzlement. 

"Where I left him, probably? I told him it was nothing - head wounds always bleed like this, you know? But he made me come down here," Miller shrugged. "Sorry to interrupt your... reports?" The blond quickly made himself at home at his desk, picking one up. "Is this really what you do after hours?"

He snatched it away before Miller got blood all over it. Not that that would be a novel occurrence; he just didn't want to have to fill it out again. "He's right. You need stitches." 

"You're the expert," Miller stretched out languidly, his hands behind his head.

He coughed and inclined his head toward the bed covered in plastic sheets for exactly this purpose. Miller switched positions agreeably enough. He coughed again, "I need you to take off your shirt. And sunglasses."

"You _need_ me to, huh?" Miller winked, before setting down the shades down with the utmost caution on a side table, and shrugging his shirt off over his head to reveal the taut, flawless figure he already knew Miller had. This was the closest he'd ever been to it, though, and he exhaled to steady himself before approaching. Focused on the wound.

The one on his chest was the more serious of the two. Jagged, three centimeters deep, ten long. Slightly lower and it would have severed muscle, not just scraped along bone. He cleaned and sterilized the area before applying a topical anesthetic, pointedly ignoring the warm breath on his gloved hands. And the way Miller's breath hitched when he drew the thread through his flesh for the first time.

He just tried to make each one as precise and seamless as he could; to leave the smallest scar possible.

"You sure don't talk much, do you, V?" Miller asked teasingly. His eyes flicked up to his face - so rare to see it without his aviators - and dropped again immediately.

"What do you want me to say?" His unlined blue eyes and light dusting of freckles only drove home how young he really was; younger than both of them.

"Well..." Miller paused, contemplating that. "You've been with the MSF from the start, but I barely know you. You could say anything. Why'd you join up?"

He pressed the wound together gently to keep it from gaping when he got to the wider parts. If he did this correctly, Miller shouldn't feel it at all. "My older brother was a soldier."

Miller waited expectantly for a few seconds before motioning for him to continue. "And... you wanted to be a soldier, just like him?"

"I didn't go to medical school because I wanted to become a soldier," he raised an eyebrow. "I joined the MSF because of Big Boss."

"Who... reminds you of your brother?" Miller raised one right back at him.

"He's nothing like my brother," he shook his head, dabbing blood away with gauze before pulling the next one through.

"Oh throw me a bone, here," Miller laughed. "Your brother was a soldier, but you didn't want to be a soldier, and you admire Big Boss?" Miller gave his arm a friendly squeeze. "I asked you why you joined the MSF, not to play two truths and a lie."

"I never said I didn't _want_ to become a soldier," he said defensively, frowning. "That's all I ever wanted to be. Him, too. But... my brother's unit was hit by artillery when I was still a kid. He was lucky enough to survive. Paralyzed, and blind."

Miller sighed quietly. "Ah. Look, if this is too personal, forget it..."

"No, it's not." He risked a glance up at sympathetic blue eyes before retreating to the safety of his profession. "As you might imagine, he was medically discharged. His immediate treatment was paid for, and he got a hero's welcome back home."

"But you wanted to heal him," Miller nodded, knowingly.

"But he wasn't in long enough for a pension. And my parents were poor. There was no work he could do, like that. He felt like a burden, even though we loved him. He knew that my mother staying home to care for him cost us her wages, and me doing it cost me time at school. We used to get help from our neighbours, but when popular sentiment turned against the war, that dried up too." 

"So you became a doctor for the money? To support him?" That was something Miller understood.

"No," he said bluntly, "he swallowed a bullet when I was twelve."

"Oh, hell. Look, I'm sorry I--"

"That's why I joined the MSF. Big Boss wants to carve out a place where soldiers are celebrated, rather than used and cast aside as soon as the tide shifts? Where they make their own fates, not relying on the whims of politicians and the empty lies of patriotism? I'll follow him to the ends of the earth. To my grave, if I have to."

Miller fell silent while he finished the last few stitches on his chest and tied off the thread. Watched him cut it, before moving to his face, fingers resting feather-light on his jaw. "...You know, I think that's the most I've ever heard you say."

"You've never talked to me before," he replied, parting blood-matted golden strands. 

"Hm. You're right," Miller almost nodded, but found that the gentleness of his grip belied its strength. "But it takes two to tango. You've never talked to me, either."

"You outrank me," he responded with a lie, cleaning his hair with unnecessary tenderness before he went back to work. "It would be unprofessional."

"If you say so, V," Miller shrugged, plainly amused. "Wouldn't be unprofessional of you to give me medical advice, though. And you've never even done that."

"You want me to give you advice?" he asked, very quietly.

"Sure, why not!" Miller agreed, glib.

"Stop picking fights with men like him," his voice was sharper than he meant it to be, and Miller's brows drew together as a result. "You won't win."

"Men like... him. Like Big Boss? I'm not sure there are any, V. Besides, we're not playing for keeps, if you know what I mean."

"That's not what I mean." Confusion was written plainly across Miller's handsome features, so he sucked in a breath. He started this. Now he'd have to finish it. "There are more men like him than I think you realize."

"What, legendary soldiers? I don't think so. Besides, I'd like to think that if I trained enough I could-"

He pressed a blood-smeared finger to Miller's lips, annoyed. "You asked for my advice. Listen to it."

"Oh I've done it now, pissed off the medic," Miller chuckled. "Sorry, V. Go ahead."

"Back in the First and Second World Wars-"

"I have _never_ had a doctor's lecture that started with a history lesson before. I'm really in for it, aren't I?"

Miller's eyes were glittering with humour, taunting him, daring him to tug his hair or on the stitches to keep him from running his mouth. 

He waited. "Are you done? During both wars, battlefield observers on either side noticed that only about a quarter of the men would actually fire their weapons in the direction of the enemy. There'd been speculation about this since the 19th century, but modern science made it possible to prove it decisively. As a result, artillery and bombardment were responsible for the vast majority of casualties."

"I think I heard something about this..."

"And of those men who would fire, only two in a hundred would shoot to kill. Many people won't kill, even if their own lives are in immediate danger. In something as abstract as war, where the other person might be hundreds of feet away and no physical threat to you, most won't. To shoot someone dead before they see you, like a sniper... there were only a handful of men in every unit that could actually pull the trigger."

"You make them sound like cold-blooded monsters," Miller said disapprovingly.

"Monsters, or heroes. Depends on how you look at it. Every side had them. Relied on them. Everyone else would support them, these men who could kill. Cover them. Supply them. Point them in the right direction. Modern desensitization techniques born out of these studies have increased that percentage considerably using realistic targets, and by turning killing into a reflex, but those didn't exist back when-"

"When Big Boss was trained and selected," blue eyes turned calculating, reserving judgement for now. "So you're telling me he's one of the two percent who can kill someone who isn't an immediate threat to him. That's not exactly a ground-breaking observation, V. Taking positions unaware is what he _does_."

"Stop interrupting me. Please," he asked, firmly. Hands working as carefully as he could manage. "Psychologists have studied that two percent, and they all share certain characteristics that the rest of us don't."

"Such as?" Miller taunted him again, but again he refused to rise to the bait.

"They have difficulty understanding the pain of others," he said diplomatically, choosing his words with the utmost care. The clinical terms for these disorders were so loaded in the popular parlance, now, that they were the last thing he wanted to say to the man's own lover. "It's not his fault - he was either born this way, or it's the result of circumstances during his early childhood. I don't hold it against him. I admire him more than any man I've ever known, but..."

Miller waited for him to finish, finally.

"...He can hurt you and not feel it. That is something you will never be able to do."

Miller sighed, eyes on the ceiling, while he tied off the last stitch on his face. "V, I think you've overthought this. He sent me down here, didn't he?" Then they brightened, and the irrepressible smile returned. "Besides, you and me, we'll keep him pointed in the right direction, won't we?"

"We will," he promised, brushing his hair back into place.

"And in order to do _that_ , we'll have to collaborate. Which means you'll have to talk to me once in a while."

"I... sure. Yes. I will," he agreed hastily, nervous all over again. He stripped off his gloves while Miller pulled his shirt back on. He moved to toss them into the trash, but Miller caught his hand and pulled him close. Closer than they were just a moment ago.

"By the way," Miller slung an arm around his waist, leaned in, and kissed his cheek. "You've been blushing this entire time."

His mortified expression made Miller laugh sunnily all the way back up to the top deck.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Love Salient (Handle With Care Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11440704) by [PlayerProphet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlayerProphet/pseuds/PlayerProphet)




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